A Journey to London in 1840. 165 



received an official letter, either from Ritchie or from the pro- 

 prietors as a body, telling him that in a fortnight thereafter, 

 namely, on the 1st of January ensuing (1820), his services would 

 no longer be required. Though he may be said to ha^■e made the 

 Scotsman, or to ha\e put it on the firm foundation <.)n which it 

 stood when he left it. yet lie was superseded in a wav that could 

 \u)t have been agreeable to his feelings and was not creditable to 

 the proprietors. Howe\er, it is but fair to say that though the 

 public opinion has e\'er been the same as that of Mrs Dempster, 

 Mr M'Culloch never complained to me of ill usage or of broken 

 faith. Mrs Dempster states that to the honour of his patience 

 and placability he had no open rupture with the parties in ques- 

 tion. There is no doubt but they had the right to do what thev 

 did, and that they violated no positive engagement. The ques- 

 tion is whether they shewed to Mr M'Culloch that degree of defer- 

 ence and consideration to which he was so richly entitled, and 

 whether they appreciated as they ought the great value < f his 

 editorial services and the eminent rank to which his talents had 

 raised the paper. 



Meanwhile Mr M'Culloch's attainments in economical 

 science had lieen exhibited in the most unqualified maner in an 

 able and searching article in the Edinburgh Review, in 1818, I 

 think, on Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy, an article 

 which placed him high in the list of li\ing economists, and 

 which besides pointed him out to Mr Jeffrey, then editor of the 

 Review, as the fittest person to furnish him with papers in that 

 department, which had previously been assigned to Francis 

 Horner, M.P., then recently dead. Mr M'Culloch accordingly 

 has ever since been a regular contributor to that journal, at least 

 till of late, when his time is, if possible, more importantly 

 employed. His articles were eminently distinguished bv the 

 greatest or rather the most detailed knowledge on the subject on 

 which they were written and of the principles invohed. 



I must not be too minute, but bring this narrative, however 

 interesting,. to a termination. Mr M'Culloch had been for some 

 time preparing lectures on his favourite science and in January, 

 1823, he made his first appearance as a public lecturer. His 

 course consisted of thirty lectures, of which he delivered three 

 ■weekly till it was completed. The place was Clyde Street Hall. 

 The attendance, even including a few pri^-ate friends whom he 



